Forget Godzilla: Facebook rolls out its own dinosaur

By Doug Gross, CNN

Updated 4:49 PM ET, Fri May 23, 2014

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Photos:Photos: Tech mascots, good and bad

Tech mascots: The good, the bad and the ugly – Facebook has rolled out this dinosaur mascot to help users navigate a "privacy checkup." The New York Times nicknamed the blue creature the "Zuckasaurus," a nod to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Read on for more tech mascots, past and present.

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Photos:Photos: Tech mascots, good and bad

Twitter's bird – The original version of Twitter's bird mascot, instantly recognizable to the site's millions of users, was purchased from a stock photo site for less than $6. The logo got a more streamlined makeover in 2012.

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Twitter's 'Fail Whale' – Australian artist Yiying Lu created the iconic image that would become known as the "Fail Whale" on Twitter. The illustration, which she called "Lifting a Dreamer," started as a doodle she sent to friends, and the original "dreamer" was an elephant. She changed it to a whale when she moved to New South Wales.

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Tivo's smiling TV guy – The name TiVo and its smiley, TV-guy mascot were both created by Michael Cronan, a San Francisco graphic designer, in 1997. Cronan reportedly said he wanted the character to be as recognizable as Mickey Mouse. Mmm, not quite.

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Microsoft Office's 'Clippy' – Microsoft CEO Bill Gates presents a T-shirt as a retirement gift to "Clippy" -- or someone dressed as the virtual Microsoft Office assistant -- a cartoon paper clip that once popped up on screens to assist and annoy users of the workplace software. Clippy was widely mocked before Microsoft retired the character in 2001.

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Google's Android robot – Google touts its Android operating system with this stout green robot, which looks a bit like "Star Wars'" R2-D2 with longer legs. The Android logo was designed for Google in 2007 by graphic designer Irina Blok.

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Reddit's alien – Reddit calls this friendly guy an alien, who jokes on the site that "I also do birthday parties." The mascot appears on the home page of the user-generated site.

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Pets.com sock puppet – This critter became a symbol for the dot.com bust. It appeared in a Super Bowl commercial and even got its own balloon in the 1999 Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade before Pets.com folded the following year.

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Hipmunk's chipmunk – Travel site Hipmunk launched in 2010 with this cute flying chipmunk. Or squirrel. Or whatever it is. Note the scarf and aviator goggles.

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Glomper – Social app Glomper launched with this mascot in 2012 as a way to share event-related plans with friends. We're not sure what this pudgy white thing with the ringed eyes is supposed to be.

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Story highlights

A new privacy tutorial for Facebook users features a blue cartoon dinosaur

The New York Times is calling it the "Zuckasaurus"

The character was "the friendliest and best choice," engineer says

It joins a list of tech mascots from Reddit's Snoo to Microsoft's annoying Clippy

In addition to making settings for all new users default to "Friends Only," Facebook announced Thursday it will prompt existing users to review their privacy settings.

Your new guide to the intricacies of controlling your personal info on the world's biggest social platform? A blue cartoon dinosaur with a snaggletooth, tapping away at a laptop that looks like some kind of Macbook.

"Hi!" reads one of the new pop-up windows, presumably relaying the sentiments of the new Mesozoic spirit animal. "Sorry to interrupt. You haven't changed who can see your post lately, so we just wanted to make sure you're sharing this post with the right audience."

Fair enough. It's part of an effort that Facebook has been undertaking for months to clarify and tighten privacy settings, something critics have dinged the site for in the past.

But why a dinosaur?

"Our team looked at a few different characters, saw the dinosaur, and just thought he was the friendliest and best choice," said Raylene Yung, an engineering manager on Facebook's privacy team. "Once we tried him out, we saw some great results and welcomed him to the team."

Dubbed the "Zuckasaurus" by The New York Times in a nod to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the (thankfully) un-Barney-like creature joins an ever-growing pantheon of tech mascots.

From TiVo's smiley, leggy TV guy to Google Android's android, there has been no shortage of cutesy characters introduced by Web and tech companies to reinforce brand identity or help set themselves apart from the masses.

As a species, they've provoked a wide variety of reactions.

Some, like Reddit's beloved Snoo, the Twitter bird and the early Web's Ask Jeeves butler invoke warm feelings among users. Even Twitter's "Fail Whale," which showed up years ago whenever the platform was over capacity, had its fans.

Other mascots weren't so lucky.

Clippy, Microsoft's talking paper clip, became one of the computing age's most mocked, if not reviled, characters. Early Windows users were forced to click him out of existence over and over again as he popped up to give advice of sometimes questionable value. Plus, he's a talking paper clip. Kind of creepy.

Then-CEO Bill Gates retired Clippy in 2001, though he was brought back in 2011 for a Microsoft Office tutorial -- but only if users chose him.

Then there was the Pets.com sock puppet. Amusing enough at first, the puppet's schtick had already started getting old by 2001, when the site went belly up, its once-ballyhooed stock worth a whopping 22 cents a share.

Will Facebook's privacy dino catch on? Or will he (or she) be mocked into extinction? Only time will tell.

On Twitter, some users Friday were calling the creature a "safeasaur" or a "privasaurus."

The New York Times said the Zuckasaurus "could suffer the cruel fate of other tech industry cartoon characters if Facebook slips on its promise to be more mindful of users' privacy."